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THE ARCHIVES
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Morrigan's Pit has closed down as of November 2006. The site and its articles will stay online as an archive until September at least, but probably longer.
The Archives
2002-2006
» CD REVIEWS
» INTERVIEWS
» LIVE REVIEWS
» SPECIALS
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BANG YOUR HEAD 2006
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Messegelände, Balingen (D)
June 23rd-24th 2006
http://www.bang-your-head.de
After the pleasant hotel-experience of last year, we decided to take things to the next level for this year's Bang Your Head festival: we didn't drive ourselves, but booked the bustravel that was organized by Rock Inc's Theo. Man, we should've done that years ago, so much fun and so much more relaxing! We left a few hours after the Vengeance warm-up gig in Weert on Wednesday night and arrived at the (very nice) hotel in Hechingen on Thursday close to noon. After a relaxing day in town with the rest of the gang (around 15 others from the bus stayed at that hotel, the rest was on the campsite), we were ready for our favorite festival again!
FRIDAY
Opening the festival were HELLFUELED from Sweden. Slow and heavy riffs, grooving songs inspired by bands like Entombed and Ozzy Osbourne & band. Even though singer Andy Alkman's voice didn't seem to be all warmed up just yet, it was a very cool start of the day and for the early visitors a good gig to wake up to.
Already second on the bill were the Norwegians of COMMUNIC. I was looking forward to seeing these guys, for I love their Nevermore-esque metal, but hadn't seen them live yet. And I loved it! Whether it were songs from the debut like "Communication Sublime" or from the new album "Waves Of Visual Decay" like the awesome "Fooled By The Serpent" - the band impressed me and many others a lot, esp. singer/guitarist Oddleif Stensland. Although forced to stay near his microphone with his double duty, he had a lot of charisma, apart from of course his musical and vocal skills. And it amazed me how full they sounded with only 3 men on stage. I can't wait to see them again at ProgPower!!
LEATHERWOLF is a band I always appreciated for it's good melodic metal and Mike Olivieri's great voice. The fact that Leatherwolf today is no longer fronted by Mike made me reluctant to see them again, even though they are now joined by none other than Wade Black. I love Black, no doubt, but I couldn't really imagine the combination. Well my worries were unnecessary. Ok, I still prefer Mike for this band, but Wade did a really good job and Geoff Gayer and his guys were received very well. Another known face in the band was 2nd guitarist Eric Halpern of Helstar, btw. I remember titles like "Gypsies And Thieves" and the new song "Live Or Die" - and after Wade introduced us to the band, they played the classic "The Calling". Great!
The band I had been anticipating the most was without any doubt FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. The Arizona thrash legend of the 80s had their ups and downs, but surprised me with a really good record last year, "Dreams Of Death". For this festival they promised to play more of the old shit though. They opened with "Hammerhead", but that was unfortunately the only song from the 1986 debut "Doomsday For The Deceiver". From the other classic album, the second one ("No Place For Disgrace"), came the songs "Hard On You", "Escape From Within" and "No Place For Disgrace", there was one song from "When The Storm Comes Down" and two from "Cuatro". Instead of the last ones, I had prefered to hear some new stuff, because there are some killer songs on the last album. But OK, this was their choice. Instead of Edward Carlson, they brought back Michael Gilbert for this 
show, but I'm not sure what the deal was. He looked unhappy and grumpy for the whole gig, I don't remember (but it's been decades) this being his "stage presence"? His performance, as well as the band's, was top-notch though! The others were clearly having a great time, esp. Eric A.K. whose voice still gave me goosebumps! Still one of the best and most unique voices in metal. My personal favorite gig of the festival - flots till death!!
setlist Flotsam And Jetsam:
Hammerhead
The Master Sleeps
Hard On You
Swatting At Flies
No Place For Disgrace
Escape From Within
Secret Square
After seeing VENGEANCE in a small club 2 days earlier, I was curious how they'd come across on a big festival. I forgot that they used to be pretty popular in Germany back in the day and they were received very well. The crowd happily partied and sang along to the old hits like "Take It Or Leave It", "Rock 'n Roll Shower" and of course "Arabia". Leon Goewie is still as crazy as ever and the current line-up is a very competent one: Hans in 't Zand on drums, Holland's premier bassist Barend Courbois and Peter Bourbon and former member Jan Somers on guitars. Several times a few girls in bikini 
came on stage with boxing gloves on and some numbers in their hands. A few new songs were played as well ("Back In The Ring" and "No Mercy"), but the promised guest appearance of Arjen "Ayreon" Lucassen was a no go. Despite that, the gig was one of the biggest parties on the stage and the crowd loved it all and cheered a lot!
setlist Vengeance:
Take It Or Leave It
Rock 'n Roll Shower
Back In The Ring
No Mercy
May Heaven Strike Me Down
Take Me To The Limit
Arabia
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Power Of The Rock
Back in the early 80s, RAVEN was one of my first favorite bands when I got into metal. But they lost me after "Live At The Inferno" and I hadn't seen them live in a long long time. Well, their "athletic rock" is still energetic and so were the guys, Mark and John Gallagher (complemented by drummer Joe Hasselvander) ran up and down and John sang like he always did, including his awesome high pitched stuff! Their pleasure in playing rubbed off on the audience and the gig was a big success.
setlist Raven:
Take Control
Live At The Inferno
Lambs To The Slaughter
All For One
Breaking You Down
Rock Until You Drop
bass solo
Speed Of The Reflex
Mind Over Metal
Break The Chain
JON OLIVA'S PAIN continues where the old Savatage left off after Jon's brother Criss died. And esp. with their upcoming 2nd album "Maniacal Renderings", where Jon used material from old tapes of Criss that Jon's wife recently discovered in a closet. Jon's voice is just awesome and his current band contains top notch musicians, esp. guitarist Matt LaPorte. They love to play old Sava hits that Savatage themselves hadn't played in many years - and the fans go ballistic hearing them again! I mean, what better things in life are there than to hear Mr. 
Mountain King himself sing "Sirens", "Hounds" (dedicated to Criss), "Gutter Ballet" and "Hall Of The Mountain King" again?! From the upcoming album they played "Time To Die" which makes us hungry for more! Jon Oliva continues the legendary Savatage heritage in which Criss Oliva lives on. All hail the Mountain King!
setlist: Jon Oliva's Pain:
Warriors
Sirens
Agony And Ecstasy
Jesus Saves
The Dark
People Say - Gimme Some Hell
Hounds
Gutter Ballet
Time To Die
Hall Of The Mountain King
One of the best reunions ever is without doubt the reunion of one of my all time favorite thrash bands DEATH ANGEL. Since then I've seen them several times and they are still one of the best live bands I've ever seen, pure energy! Mark Osegueda is an amazing singer as well as frontman, who can't say often enough how much he loves us beautiful people, the band is tight and energetic, even though they had to play on borrowed equipment. The audience celebrated all the songs, old and new (and even one The Organization song, 
"The Drought"), but only one thing was missing for me: my all time favorite metal song "Kill As One"! How can they not play that classic?! Besides that little disappointment still an awesome gig!
setlist Death Angel:
3rd Floor
5 Steps Of Freedom
Seemingly Endless Time
Thicker Than Blood
Voracious Souls
EX-TC
Stagnant
Evil Priest
The Devil Incarnate
The Drought
Thrown To The Wolves
Discontinued
We didn't see much of HELLOWEEN, but I heard they played a lot of classics like "Eagle Fly Free", "Future World", "I Want Out" and "Dr. Stein". The stage was decorated with big pumpkins and as an extra surprise in the setlist, they got Tony Martin on stage to perform the Sabbath classic "Headless Cross" together.
Sometimes there are bands on a bill that you think will bore you - and then they turn out to be one of the best, much to your 
surprise! This happened to me with FOREIGNER. Much heavier live, the guitars were very much in the front, singer Kelly Hansen did a tremendous job, just as bassplayer Jeff Pilson, drummer Jason Bonham and of course bandleader Mick Jones, who still had so much charisma! The space between the stage and the sound tower was very filled up, I'm sure this was the biggest crowd of the festival, except for Whitesnake on the second day. During the gig I realized I knew quite a few songs! It was a big, big party with thousands of people singing along to "Cold As Ice", "Feels Like The First Time", "Urgent" (with the saxophone solo), "Hot Blooded" and my favorite hit "Juke Box Hero"! But my very favorite song on the setlist was the (to me still unknown) 70's song "Starrider". The true headliner of this festival (or at the least for this day)!
And apparently I wasn't the only one who thought that, when IN FLAMES started to play, it wasn't nearly as full. Even though I'm generally into the heavier bands on the BYH billings, I'm not a big fan of the Swedish melodic death/thrash genre. I enjoyed hearing a few songs (a.o. "Leeches"), but the sound was pretty chaotic IMO, I hope it got better later on. Frontman Anders Friden could've skipped the boring (world championship) soccer talk, but the best part was the show itself anyway. The lightshow was huge, but there were no lights in the front (what kind of annoying and weird fashion is that nowadays?!). I prefer to see the musicians when I come to a live gig, but on the other hand, the rest of the lights and the many, many pyros were truly spectacular. Yet after a few songs it was time for us to call it a night and leave for the hotel.
SATURDAY
To have a horror theme band play on a sunny morning seems odd, but POWERWOLF did a good job entertaining the crowd with their power metal and their stage show. The musicians were dressed in black and red, wore a bit of white/black/red make-up and singer Attila Dorn looks like a kind of mix between King Diamond and Count Dracula. His funny Romanian accent, fake or not, and a "wolf" coming on stage enhanced the joy and the entertainment value. I'm not too crazy about their songs (except "Lucifer In Starlight"), but the sympathetic band was received very well. Best announcement ever: "And the next song is... muss ich gucken gehen!!" (German for "I have to go look") ;)
ANVIL has been around since 1977 and still it's always fun to see this band live. Lips doesn't really change 
much and has hardly aged, he still makes funny faces and yells to his guitar sometimes to reproduce his voice instead of through a normal microphone. And of course it's a blast to hear the old classics like "666", "School Love", "Winged Assassins" (where Lips aired his disgust for war), "Forced In Fire", "Mothra" and of course the hymn "Metal On Metal" again. With "This Is Thirteen" there was also a new song on the setlist. Good times!
setlist Anvil:
666
School Love
Winged Assassin
This Is Thirteen
Forged In Fire
Mothra
Metal On Metal
Musically, VICTORY is pretty boring to me, so I can't say a lot about that. I do know that the new singer Jioti Parcharidis has a great voice and the band put on a good and solid show. During "Check's In The Mail" some fan (I think) came on stage probably to propose to his girlfriend, but as far as I could see it took a long time for the girl to get to the stage, so the band continued their set. Let's hope she said yes and they will live happily ever after ;)
COUNT RAVEN didn't really entertain many people I think, except maybe a few die-hard doom metal fans. It bored me and I heard someone say the singer sounded like Ozzy on a bad (!) day...
Lucky it's time to wake up again with UNLEASHED. Their death metal was pleasantly fast at times and we enjoyed songs like "To Asgard We Fly", "Don't Want To Be Born" and the anthem "Death Metal Victory".
One of the few highlights of this second day was the well-olied machine
ARMORED SAINT. Since Anthrax prefers to play in the old line-up with Joey Belladonna these days, John Bush has time for his Saint buddies again. I don't mind, it's always a big pleasure to see this band! John fits best here and each and every time it's just great to see e.g. Joey Vera and Phil Sandoval's performances. Of course they played a lot of popular songs like "Reign Of Fire", "Aftermath" (where Bush talks to someone in the audience who apparently brought all his AS album covers to the show), "Tribal Dance", "Seducer", "Delirious Nomad" and "Can U Deliver". As usual John aired his anti-US/G.W. Bush feelings with "Drug War" ("USA is losing that war too. Losers!") and "Warzone" ("this is still up to date after 15 years, the US is still fighting Iraq. But we do support the boys over there, they are just the dirty dogs."). And them closing with their band hymn "March Of The Saint" was the icing on the cake!
The Danish PRETTY MAIDS were never my thing, way too sweet. We checked out a few songs, but this was more pop than rock to me, so we decided to take a break.
Dave Meniketti & co. were next and since we saw Y&T on this stage a few years ago, we knew what to expect. Timeless hardrock, perfectly executed and going down very well on a festival like this. Many hits came by, like "Black Tiger", "Dirty Girl", "Midnight In Tokyo", "Hurricane", "Rescue Me", "Meanstreak", "Forever" and of course the ultimate hardrock ballad "I Believe In You" (with thousands singing along!)... super performance!
I've never been really familiar with Triumph, but Nico was totally looking forward to this gig of RIK EMMETT, founder, guitarist and singer of said band, who would perform a set with only Triumph songs today. Maybe a tad boring for those who 
didn't know the songs, but for the Triumph fan a treat! Great performance, Rik's voice and guitar playing are still phenomenal (for once I loved a long guitarsolo on a festival!) and a dream come true for the fans who never got to see these Canadians (whose only European gig was one in the UK in the early 80s). A pretty unique show that ended with big balloons/balls being kicked into the audience :)
setlist Rik Emmett:
Fight The Good Fight
Allied Forces
Rock 'n' Roll Machine
solo
Blinding Light Show
Lay It On The Line
Ordinary Man
Hold On
Magic Power
STRATOVARIUS' gig was a welcome break to us, since both Nico and I don't like this music and wanted to get something to eat and have a few drinks and chats in the press area. So Nico put away his camera (Whitesnake had a selective list of photographers for their set %$#@%, so Nico decided to take the rest of the night off) and during the sounds of "Hunting High And Low" we disappeared for a while until the headliner of the night would start.
Now it took quite a while for this particular headliner to actually start. WHITESNAKE came on stage more than half an hour late. David Coverdale's excuse was that he was no Axl Rose, they just had some problems with the equipment. I guess we'll never know for sure, but this show evoked some mixed feelings with everybody. The band was really good, and it was a blast to hear these ultimate classic hardrock songs live (and all the massive singing along of course), but Mr. Coverdale's voice didn't come close to what we heard on the (nicely done, but too polished) live CD/DVD that came out earlier this year. Did he have a bad day or is he living on old fame? I have to say that we still enjoyed the gig, because of all the big hits. The opener was the Deep Purple song "Burn", it was phenomenal with the new bassist Uriah Duffy doing those chilling backing vocals! Many well-known songs were played, like "Love Ain't No Stranger", "Fool For Your Lovin'", "Is This Love", "Here I Go Again" and "Still Of The Night". But there was another thing that annoyed many, many people. They had only 65 minutes left, because of a strict curfew at 11pm, and 
still they played their several lengthy solos! I do love to listen to Doug Aldrich's and Reb Beach's soloing, but in this case I'd rather hear a Whitesnake song. Maybe David's vocal cords needed a break, but the fans felt cheated and I heard a lot of complaints around me. Because of the huge show and songs, this was still a band with headliner status, but it was definitely not the climax this festival (and fans) deserved.
setlist Whitesnake:
Burn/Stormbringer
Love Ain't No Stranger
Fool For Your Loving
Is This Love
Ready An' Willing
guitar solo
Crying In The Rain/drumsolo
Here I Go Again
Still Of The Night
This 11th edition didn't draw as many people as last year's 10th anniversary did, but for the visitors it was nice to have a bit more space again. The weather was hot as usual, but luckily no desaster thunderstorms this time! Many thanks to Horst and his crew for the organisation, Theo for his bustravel and hotelarrangement (again happy 40th birthday - "still røckin"! ;)) and a big hello to our gang from the bus & hotel, esp. our new friends Brian and Cynthia and to my favorite Chileans Anton and Nicole who I finally got to meet in person today - cheers and see ya all (at the latest) next year! \m/
submitted by Marlies 28.08.2006
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